Crafting Classics From a Mix of the Old and the New

By Arthur Touchot

Sept. 2, 2014

LONDON — The practice of passing off new wine in old bottles is widely condemned; the reverse is another matter.

Pierre Galli, 60, and Thomas Engeler, 51, the founders of the young Swiss brand Pierre Thomas, are doing the watchmakers’ equivalent of selling old wine in new bottles — putting antique watch movements into modern cases.

“We start with a movement which is an old movement,” Mr. Engeler said in an interview, “and we build a high-end watch around it.”

The Fabrique d’Ébauches de Fontainemelon, founded in 1793 in the Jura Mountains, was the first factory to turn out semifinished watch movement kits, known as ébauches, on a mass scale for sale to Switzerland’s nascent watchmaking industry. The company no longer exists, having been merged long ago into what has become the Swatch Group’s movement-making business, ETA. But its movements live on in Pierre Thomas, established in 2010 in the famed Swiss watchmaking village La Chaux De Fonds.

“Sometime during the 1990s,” Mr. Engeler said, Mr. Galli, a dial maker with a workshop in that village, was rummaging in a collector’s attic and came across a set of 300 unused Fontainemelon ébauches made between 1870 and 1960.

They went into Mr. Galli’s own attic, where they stayed for years until, in 2002, Mr. Galli, whose workshop made dials for Patek Philippe, met Mr. Engeler, then working at Patek.

The two came up with a simple idea: Take the vintage mechanisms and update them “au gout du jour,” Mr. Engeler said.

Pierre Thomas isn’t the only brand investing in hybrid watches. Later this year, a recent British start-up, Pinion, will introduce its “Revival” collection, featuring a 100-watch limited edition hand-wound chronograph built around an iconic Swiss movement, the Valjoux 7734, made between 1968 and 1974.

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Pierre Galli and Thomas Engeler of Pierre Thomas.CreditPierre Thomas

Piers Berry, chief executive of Pinion, said vintage movements were an interesting addition for a modern brand.

“They do have the benefit of history as they have been tried and tested in the past,” he said. “Being reliable and robust really is one of the most important aspects in watchmaking and by using vintage movements you get this, but also a great product with lots of charm.”

Yet, if the concept is simple, it can be difficult to put into practice. For one thing, vintage movement kits can be more expensive than a modern automatic movement, Mr. Berry said, and they “take a lot of time to assemble by hand, prior to full watch assembly.”

Size can be another problem. Many of the older kits in Mr. Galli’s Fontainemelon cache were designed for bulky pocket watches. Fitting them into a wristwatch case was particularly challenging.

Pierre Thomas solved that problem by making size a trademark of the brand. In 2010, it unveiled its Tourbillon XXL, one of the largest mechanical wristwatches on the market, with a dial measuring 49 millimeters, or 1.9 inches, in diameter.

Set in a skeletonized, see-through compartment at 8 o’clock on the dial, a 16-millimeter tourbillon — housing core parts of the movement in a gravity-neutralizing revolving cage mechanism — turns through a full cycle once every 60 seconds. By itself half the size of some smaller watches, it gives the XXL, a “big personality,” Mr. Engeler said.

While the tourbillon is attention-grabbing, the watch’s design remains sober. “It would have been bad taste to make a crazy design” around a historical piece, Mr. Galli said: “It must retain an idea of purity.”

Other Pierre Thomas models include three separate “Grande Seconde” collections — featuring a large second hand placed in the center of the dial — made from 1930 Fontainemelon ébauches and the PT39 collection, housing Fontainemelon movements from 1960.

Another obvious problem confronts these hybrid watchmakers: What to do when vintage kit supplies run out?

For now, that’s still in the future. But Mr. Engeler, for one, is not be worried.

Having spent years deconstructing and reconstructing the Fontainemelon movements, he says he’s confident he can “draw each piece in there,” and “make the historical movements from scratch, with the materials of today.”